Review of Comments to Consultation

Keep it Green 2014 continue to monitor comments submitted to the latest consultation.
From an examination of those comments received by the Council and now published on the Proposed Main Modifications web site, it is interesting to note that the promoters of Site MU1, Barnsley West Consortium including Strata and Spawforths, are acknowledging that “the site requires substantial site engineering works to facilitate its development” and that this will also “involve significant cut and fill operations to alter the vertical and horizontal alignment of the site and create platforms to accommodate future development”.

Never told us this did they in their Masterplan nor during the Examination in Public before the Planning Inspector.

In addition, the comments also acknowledged that the “requisite engineering works will, in turn, impact on the future provision and routing of public rights of way across the site”.

So they intend to change all the footpaths/rights of way that we all know and have been in place for a considerable length of time.

The promoters of the site as a consequence are challenging the Council’s “proposed planning policy requirement to ‘protect’ present routes of public rights of way as both unrealistic and inappropriate in this context” since it is “likely to impact adversely on the delivery of development” of Site MU1.

This acknowledgement clearly raises technical and environmental issues which conflict with other policies within the Council’s Local Plan.

The site promoter’s proposals will, by their admission, radically change the landscape of Site MU1.

This is clearly at odds with the Council’s declared policy of retaining existing landscape character and topography.

It is interesting to note that there is no mention about combating potential ground conditions from the opencast mining legacy.

These issues are not new since Keep It Green 2014 has raised these points many times on behalf of the local community throughout the earlier consultation and Examination in Public Hearings as part of the case for objecting to Site MU1.